Thursday, March 12, 2015, was a sad day for me. For it was the day that Sir Terry Pratchett, creator of Discworld, satirical-humanist extraordinaire, and recreational swordsmith, died.

Before leaving us at age 66, due to a rare form of Alzheimer’s Disease, Terry treated the world to more than 70 books, for young and old alike. After hearing the news, I wept, in sadness and in joy. For in losing Terry, I lost a beloved teacher. But in the wake of his loss, I also gained a sense of gratitude for exactly how much this white-bearded, epic-hat-wearing author influenced me as a human being and as a fledgling writer.

Terry was a gateway author for my 12 year-old soul, ushering me into a world where my small town life and my late middle school self were finally mirrored back to me. Through characters like Susan Sto Helit, Mort, Jeremy Clockson, The Abbot, Death, and The Sweeper, Terry gave me the courage to be weird. It was okay that I didn’t fit in with my peers, because there in Sir Pratchett’s novels were dreamers, philosophers, over-thinkers, humanists, people well-intentioned but socially awkward. You know, human beings that acted a lot like me. Through Good Omens, he introduced me to Neil Gaiman, whose work inspires me more than any other author. And it was the energy and crystalline precision of Terry’s sentences that first made me think: “Hm, maybe I’d like to spend more of my life writing. I’d love to create sentences like that.”

There is a question all this reflection brings up: why haven’t I spoken about him more? When I was asked to name my major creative influences in a recent interview, Terry didn’t come up in my answer. Which was odd. I’m usually a person who is self-reflective and systematic about her writing. I can tell how and why a writer has had an impact of my craft and even show you examples. But why haven’t I ever mentioned Terry? I read him with just as much gusto and frequency as any of my other favorite authors. I think my previous silence about Terry was twofold—I was intimidated by him and I’m only now realizing the depth of his impact. This filters into one thing: his plot structure. God, the way he wrote plot intimidated me. It was full of scenes that popped and whizzed through your senses, making you laugh, cry, and ponder the mysteries of humanity. It felt frenzied, but the madness always breathlessly hung together with a careful precision.

No one plots novels like Terry. And to me, that’s what makes an artist—they create something that only they can create. His plots are so beautiful and personalized to him, that I don’t know if I could ever directly use his tactics in my work. Yet, thinking of writing scenes of varying length that carefully fit together instead of writing in well-measured chapters, is getting my first novel draft on the page. Who knows if this is how I will keep it. But Terry’s writing style encourages me to think of the piece like a clock, to write it so that my character’s worlds and desires click and whirr together, freeing me from chapter quotas and keeping me ever mindful of how the larger project may end up fitting together.

Thank you Sir Terry for your wonderful stories. You truly were a writer uniquely your own. I shall deeply miss reading your new words and I am grateful for the continued guidance of your old ones.

I say this as I stare at a blank portion of screen in Microsoft Word. The sentences of past writing sessions stream before and after this space, for pages and pages, but I cannot marvel at their existence now. I must write 300 words in that blank space: 300 words that will tell me what will happen next, 300 words that will bring the beginning and end of a novel draft closer to completion.

I wrinkle my brow. It’s only 300 words. That’s not a lot. Though today it feels like a lot. Today, the thought of writing even 50 words feels painful and anxiety inducing.

Thanks, writer’s block. I have no idea what to say. I don’t know what direction to take my characters in. I don’t know how to continue the plot.

And that’s when I stop, walk into my kitchen, and make a pot of tea.

And as I pack tea leaves into a tea ball, my mind begins to wander: Why? Why don’t I know my characters’ directions? Why don’t I know how to continue the plot?

Asking “Why?” always helps my writer’s block.

The answer starts to present itself as I lower the tea ball into an empty teapot. I don’t know my characters’ directions, because I’m jealous of them. In their fictional lives, love and intimacy are just next door for them. They find it happily in friends and significant others who live out daily nothing’s with them. The people who are dearest to me are peppered about the United States and the world—marvelous, if you like to write letters and travel (which I do), but not so marvelous when you need a shoulder to sob into or someone to tell you about the trivial details of their day. My lack of words was my petty attempt not to face my jealousy.

I don’t know where the plot is going because it’s moving in directions beyond my life experience. My lack of words in this case is a symptom of my insecurity that a reader, a editor, a publisher, will notice that I am out of my league and make fun of me for it.

I carefully pour hot water into the teapot with the packed tea ball. Into this hollow, ceramic vessel flows water, which soon will be tea. And I think of that blank space that waits for me in Microsoft Word. It may not contain 300 words, but it is flowing with existential questions. Questions I must notice and answer as I write on. I’ll need more than 300 words to do that.

About a month ago, my friend Kim wrote an excellent blog post about writing in the morning. I read it at the beginning of January, on a train ride from New York to New Haven. The post was full of luscious descriptions of gourmet oatmeal and the pure joy of putting together sentences. The whole piece was a pleasure to read, but one line stood out in particular to me: Kim wanted her readers to enjoy their morning drafts, to revel in their messiness, to take delight in slipping outlandish ideas and sentences into their work before their inner editor woke up. “Much of life” she wrote, “is messy process folks, not product.” This line made me laugh hysterically, startling the reveries of my fellow train passengers, but I didn’t care. I laughed because her words felt so damn true.

It turns out that my friend’s line was a prolific harbinger, giving shape to my next thirty days. My January was quite messy—full of chaos, lessons, and growth. It was a time that stretched my understanding of life, essay writing, librarianship, and human nature. And during that month, I was rarely able to make my bed. My mornings before work found me on my laptop, typing in a sea of blankets, before throwing on work clothes and running out the door. During the day, no bedspread calmed this unruly sea. The blankets stayed rumpled and exposed, with grammar and theology books hiding in their folds.

Not having time to make my bed felt odd. It’s one of those morning rituals that makes me feel like I have life in order. That I can be just as flawless and put together as a smooth bedspread and artistically placed pillows. But I wasn’t this past January and didn’t have the time to make believe that I was. There was nothing finished about January—I was in a process, growing and creating. And a made bed is a product. But a rumpled, unmade, bed is a space of possibility, a place to live into an ever changing life.
The right companion for a messy process.

Yesterday was Jane Austen’s 239th birthday and it was a day I observed by joyfully rereading my favorite parts of Persuasion (um…Sophia Croft being a badass lady adventurer, the awesome debate Anne Elliot has with Captain Harville on whether men or women love the longest when all hope is gone, and Captain Wentworth’s letter of reconciliation to Anne…yeah, that book contains some intellectually and emotionally hot stuff. Also, the Regency Era British Royal Navy: you know there are men of feeling with sideburns present.) and sought out Henry Tilney’s sassiest observations in Northanger Abbey (he really is the best).

Yet on a day when I reread Jane with gleeful abandon, I caught myself being introspective. As I met this fine author again in her sparkling stories, I realized why it is so hard for me to write directly about her in my own work. Jane is too close to me. She has influenced me more deeply than any other author, living or dead (though C.S. Lewis and Neil Gaiman are a close second and third to her magnificence). After all of my blathering about her brilliant narratives, outlandish characters, and smart social commentary, what truly draws me back to Jane again and again is the deep feeling of warmth, understanding, and safety her narrative voice gives me. Yet, though I know these feelings and I feel these feelings, I cannot articulate to you their particular natures.

As a writer, you need to have some distance to get anything done. I find it is much easier to write about things when you are on the outskirts, quietly observing the bustle and struggles of others. I could never have that distance with Jane. I’m too close. Jane is too dear. It was her Anne Elliot that helped a twelve-year-old me feel a little less lonely. It was her keen social observations that helped an awkward teenage and young adult me begin to understand the wonder and giddiness and awfulness of human nature. And it was her own confidence and commitment to her craft that still inspires me today.

No, I cannot have distance from Jane. I never will. Her stories have woven themselves far too deeply into my soul. But, I can have patience and allow time to help me figure out her influence upon me. For walking constantly with someone over time can be just as good as observing that someone from a distance.

Plus, it gives me an excuse to read her more often. Not that I ever needed one.

Next month, a short story of mine will be appearing in the inaugural issue of The Young Raven’s Literary Review. You can preview an excerpt from “A Fruitful Tale” here: http://www.youngravensliteraryreview.org/

The preview also includes an interview in which I talk about my major creative influences as well as my major crush on the character, Daniel Deronda (seriously, it was a very good day when George Eliot decided to tell Mr. Deronda’s story in 800 glorious pages. I honestly believe his existence cancels out all the whiny douchebaggery of any Charles Dickens hero).

Most of me is excited for the world to read “A Fruitful Tale” next month. It is a story that I needed to write, and, it has delighted and helped my inner circle of friends. If it has helped and delighted me and those I hold the closest to me, I’d be a short-sighted story miser to keep it from others. But, there is simultaneously a small bit of me that is currently going: “OH GOD. OH GOD. OH GOD. I’M EXPOSING BITS OF MY INNER LIFE TO STRANGERS. I FEEL SOOOO NAKED AND VULNERABLE AND THAT NAKEDNESS AND VULNERABILITY IS SUPER PUBLIC AND THAT COMBINATION IS JUST THE WORST. WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF?”

I shouldn’t be surprised that this small bit of me has such a big worry. I am putting a piece of fiction into the world, and as a writer, I find writing fiction to be much more exposing than writing non-fiction. In non-fiction, I can direct my audience’s gaze, neatly hedging in their reading experience with carefully articulated facts and emotions. The pronoun “I” can be used to create intimacy, but it also can be used to control. I am letting you into my head. And I am tightly controlling your perception of my narrative.

That’s not how it is when I write fiction. There is something about a narrative which is created from abstraction that leaves me and my most inner of inner lives completely naked. I’ve been writing fiction since I was ten and this truth still surprises me. Creating a fictional story turns off the hyper self-aware part of me, leaving me to show my audience only how I feel. Fiction cannot be distracted by a sequence of exterior events—it is crafted from the ideas and joys and muddles that are always flowing through my body. Writing fiction is as interior as I can get, and with me, deep interiority is tied to inarticulate notions of privacy, intimacy, and vulnerability.

Gah, so utterly terrifying.

Yet, so utterly exhilarating.

Since fiction is such an exposing craft, it allows me to give words to that which is most private and unsayable for me. By articulating this, I get to see me and my desires and my longings better. Which, in turn, helps others to see themselves and their desires and their longings better. My willingness to tell a secret story swirling around in my subconscious will help others to be brave and start telling their own.

And knowing that my vulnerability in fiction may help others, makes all the trouble worthwhile—even though there is still that little bit of me breathlessly rambling on in all caps.

For his third birthday, I bought my honorary nephew The Dark, Lemony Snicket’s newest book for children. Before the purchase, one of my dearest friends and I stood by the children’s book island in the middle of the Strand, a famous New York city bookstore. Though the city, with its ever lively pace, still moved around us as shoppers and tourists, we were suspended in the quiet, honest loveliness of the story. Huddled over the book’s crisp, yet textured, drawings of oranges, ambers, blues, and blacks.

We took turns reading each page out loud to one another. The story went something like this: Laszlo was afraid of the Dark, but that was okay because the Dark, who lived in the basement, stayed out of Laszlo’s room. But one night, when his night light burned out, the Dark visited him. This encounter taught Laszlo that: “…without the Dark, everything would be light, and you would never know if you needed a light bulb.”

By the story’s end and with our shoulders touching, my friend and I were both quietly crying.

After reading a few more children’s books to each other, we wandered around the store’s remaining floors (Three to be exact). I suppose the experience was impressive, but my senses dulled towards the towers of books that towered above us. My mind was still with Laszlo, slowly re-feeling its way through his encounter with the Dark. Yes, the book was for my nephew, but the more I thought about it, the story was also for me.

I am not a young child, afraid of the dark in my bedroom—that doesn’t mean my adult life has not had its share of darkness. These past five years have put me in places and experiences where I have seen (with much surprise and sadness) how pain, fear, anger, and loss can wind around a person, hiding them from themselves and disordering and dissembling every important relationship they have. It’s horrible to watch. It’s even more horrible to be on the receiving end of its desperate grip.

God, “…without the Dark, everything would be light, and you would never know if you needed a light bulb,” is such a powerful line for me. When the Dark visited me, its presence hurt. But, its presence also tuned my senses to quickly see and deeply experience life’s blessings and joys—proverbial light bulbs—whenever they enlightened and enlivened my messy little bundle of experience and truth.

Apparently, The Dark helps my honorary nephew fall asleep. That’s what his mother told me yesterday. This knowledge makes me smile. We all have little stories that we tell ourselves, to make us strong, to make us brave, to help us not be afraid of the dark. I’m glad The Dark is such a story for him. And, I hope its wisdom will continue to walk with him and to strengthen him for the rest of his life.

Recently, I sent a friend a text. The content wasn’t important. Perhaps it was about meeting up or figuring out a decent time to chat amidst our mutually busy lives. But after sending it, I slumped back into my office chair, overcome by tears of relief. For the first time in a year, I saw me in the grammar and vocabulary of the text—neither S.L. Woodford the writer, who tends to favor long, elegant sentences and whimsical witticisms, nor Sarah L. Woodford (Library Director), who strides about her texts and e-mails with jolly precision and no-nonsense professionalism, but simply Sarah, a human being who doesn’t favor any sort of sentence structure and would much rather be spending her time cooking, drinking tea, reading, playing music, gardening, and being part of the joys and difficulties of her friends’ lives.

Only as I sobbed did I realize how much I’ve hidden behind both my librarian and writer personae this year. Given the pain that the death of my mother spewed into my life, it makes sense why it happened. Grief casts such a sharp, white pain onto your life, that it’s easier to hold up the simple shapes of your personality, like puppets, and let their shadows dance in the harsh light. The shadows you cast can make you appear whole even when you are not. S.L. Woodford and Sarah L. Woodford were structured, predictable roles. I knew the expectations and assumptions that came with playing them. But being Sarah was much more unpredictable. Grief threw some of my deepest held personality traits into upheaval and direct contradiction. I’m rather self-sufficient and usually a resource for others; I had to learn how to ask others for help this year. I’m also someone who primarily finds comfort and love in thoughtful words—yet, words seemed so empty and distant this year. I just longed to be held, to be shielded. Grief made me cry in ladies’ toilets, run out of concerts, and carry around packets upon packets of tissues. It made me irrationally terrified of beginning new relationships (because even good things end, and it’s hard and sucky and awful). And if there was any possibility of rejection, of silence, or of misunderstanding, at the hands of my fellow human beings, I kept my distance. I had quite enough big, complicated emotions to deal with already. I didn’t need anything new.

And if I couldn’t predict who I was or how I would act, why would I subject others to my inconsistencies and deep pain? S.L. Woodford and Sarah L. Woodford were much safer and steadier creatures to know. Sarah needed a year of hermitage.

Grief casts such a sharp, white pain onto your life, that it’s easier to hold up the simple shapes of your personality, like puppets, and let their shadows dance in the harsh light. The shadows you cast can make you appear whole even when you are not.

But there I was, in 160 characters or less, joyfully reaching out to my friend. And through the tears, I was happy and awed. Happy, that the desire to connect was still within me. Awed, that the will to earnestly step into the life of another (but only if you’re wanted :)) was at last returning.

Oh my gosh you guys, after four months riddled with various high pressure deadlines, I have a break. An actual break. And nothing says taking a break from high pressure deadlines quite like silly YouTube Videos about Jane Austen and her books (well, at least for me). So, for your viewing pleasure, and my easy access, here are some of my favorites:

A few weeks ago, I received a package from a friend living on the West Coast. Inside the package were twelve sealed letters, ready for me to open over the course of a month. And open them I did. Each one contained the hand writing and colloquialisms of my friend. Each envelope filled with the personal, the emotive, the empowering, and the Romantic—exactly like my lively friend who loves people, psychology, social-justice, and Mary Ann Evans.

A few days later, my phone chimed, alerting me that an unopened e-mail waited in my inbox. And open it I did. A note from another friend living in the D.C. area, sent from her iPhone as she paused in the midst of classes and hospital work to see how I was doing. Each sentence on the screen glowed with precision and warmth—exactly like my gentle friend who studies and works in the fast-paced world of medicine.

Though I am a 21st-Century woman, reading these correspondences made me feel like an ancient Roman. In the Roman world of sprawling empire, letters tied people together. A letter was always a practical form of connection, but the Romans turned this mode of communication into a work of art and a piece of philosophy. To the Roman mind, a letter was a physical extension of the sender to the receiver. When you read a sender’s words, they became present to you—as if you sat in the same room with each other. This made correspondence, especially among close friends, a sacred and intimate act. Open a letter, and you open a passageway to your friend. Distance be damned.

I agree with the Romans when I read letters and e-mails. I love to experience my friends through the things that they write, because as a writer, the main way I engage with the world and others is through words: sometimes spoken, sometimes written. Typed words and uttered phrases conjure up for me my life’s beloveds, even when they are far away. But though I depend on words, I know that without action, without some sort of real presence, some sort of real love, those same words can become cavernous and distancing. I am grateful that I have friends who know the weight of words. When miles space apart friendships, letters and e-mails typed on iPhones become an action, a sort of real presence, a manifestation of real love. Allowing you to once more hold your friends in your hands.

Last week, I wrote a paragraph’s worth of free indirect speech in a short story I’m drafting. This little paragraph made me so happy, because out of all the third person narrative techniques I’m familiar with, free indirect speech mesmerizes me the most.

Used by famous writers like Jane Austen, Goethe, and Virginia Wolf, free indirect speech is a narrative technique that blends the distance of third person speech (S.L. Woodford wrote with vigor) with the direct engagement of first person speech (I wrote with vigor).

So, a writer can write things like:

S.L. Woodford wrote with vigor and refrained from watching Tom Hiddleston teach Cookie Monster about the importance of “delayed gratificatiion” on YouTube. The restraint will be worth the effort.

Instead of :

S.L. Woodford wrote with vigor and refrained from watching Tom Hiddleston teach Cookie Monster about the importance of “delayed gratificatiion” on YouTube.

“My restraint will be worth the effort,” she thought.

Or:

S.L. Woodford wrote with vigor and refrained from watching Tom Hiddleston teach Cookie Monster about the importance of “delayed gratificatiion” on YouTube. She thought that her restraint would be worth the effort.

Free indirect speech seamlessly allows the writer to take the reader into the thought processes of a book’s characters by incorporating their voice into the larger narrative structure. And in the process, the reader’s eye is neither distracted by the starting and stopping of direct speech’s quotations, nor is it fatigued by the constant repetition of indirect speech’s reporting phrases. I don’t know about you, but I can only read “she thought,” “he said,” “it groaned,” so many times before my innards start simmering with a quiet—yet wrathful—rage.

Because free indirect speech slips intimately into the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations of a character, a reader and character can have a communion of thought, feeling, and physicality without superfluous punctuation and phrases cutting in at inopportune times. And, within this communion of thought, there are more opportunities for the reader to cultivate empathy through directly experiencing a character’s inner life.

How I love it when writers use free indirect speech well. It makes me feel like they trust me, the reader, when they make me privy to their characters’ most intimate thoughts. Through it, their character’s can be vulnerable. In that vulnerability, I can better understand their character’s actions and interactions with others.

And, how I love it when free indirect speech occurs in my writing. For its presence reminds me that I am giving up control. I am at last trusting my readers with my characters, my narrative, and my art.

P.S. Remember that Tom Hiddleston / Cookie Monster video I used in my grammar examples above? It is quite delightful if you like Tom Hiddleston, Cookie Monster, slight Shakespearean references, cookies, and delayed gratification (or any combination of those things). So, I’m just going to leave this here…